Can I interest you in a pre-loved motor vehicle?
UK
Joined May 2012
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Richard Hollis retweeted
"Why did they waste so much time making a flying car no one can use in the real world?"
Because not everything is about whether you can imagine it being useful to you. Because like art, sometimes we make things for the glory and challenge of making them. Because we don't know if what we'll learn will make your toaster work better and you'll never realize it because you take for granted that things get better without thinking through how that happens. Because you can't inspire people with toasters, but a barrel-rolling car that can drive upside down is absolutely setting someone on fire right now.
I'm not a car person and you shouldn't trust me with a rocket, but I want a roadster because I make art and that thing is absolutely a thing made for love and passion and I get that in my heart.
(Also because I'd look really cool in one.)🤣
Richard Hollis retweeted
Worth a listen - a message from a guy whose business has invested billions in our country…
Richard Hollis retweeted
On the third anniversary of the 7 October Hamas terrorist massacre, don't fall for the lies. Here is a fully sourced account of why you shouldn't believe the propaganda. And do not denounce it unless you've actually clicked on it and read it.
Gaza is the most lied about war in history. There was no genocide, no famine, no intentional targeting of children. These are modern-day blood libels. We need to expose all the Islamo-left lowlifes who spread these lethal falsehoods, says Brendan O’Neill
buff.ly/v0hJX0j
Richard Hollis retweeted
Most arguments I see in support of inheritance tax have two prongs:
1. Not many people pay it; and
2. You didn't earn the inheritance yourself.
The first doesn't persuade me. A tax doesn't become fair simply because it falls on a minority.
The second troubles me much more, because it suggests a particular view of the relationship between the individual, the family and the State that I'm not comfortable with.
“You didn't earn it” assumes that the relevant unit is always the individual. Your parents earned their property, you didn't. Therefore there is nothing objectionable about the State intervening when property passes from one to the other.
I can't accept that underlying premise
The family is much more than a collection of economically independent individuals who happen to be related. People work, save, build businesses, improve farms and homes, and make huge sacrifices for their families. Generations care for one another and families undertake projects which extend well beyond an individual lifetime.
The State should protect the sphere of family life, not seek to disrupt or dominate it.
Intervention in a family requires a very high degree of justification. Where someone is being harmed, abused or exploited, of course the State should intervene. But the presumption should be that peaceful families can order their own affairs, care for one another and pass what they have built from one generation to the next.
That is why “you didn't earn it” makes me so uncomfortable as a justification for inheritance tax. It treats the death of a family member as though property has somehow become ownerless and properly defaults to the State.
If you want to say "it's unfair some people are born into families who have more wealth" then say it, and take the argument on its merits. The State needs tax to exist, and it has to gain it from somewhere.
But the fundamental point underlying this is whether the State is justified in intervening in the peaceful affairs of the family?
We don't belong to the State. Our families don't exist by its permission. And our property shouldn't pass to it when we die.
The presumption should be that families are left alone. If anyone wants to override that principle, it needs to be justified.
Richard Hollis retweeted
Handy guide this. All British political parties to have adopted the policy of Zionism is Racism. 👇
What @TheGreenParty have done today is absolutely shameful black shirts masquerading as environmentalists. Not something I thought I would see in my country in my lifetime or ever again.
Shame on you
Just the presence of mind let alone the courage and humility is off the scale
One of the Israeli passengers who subdued the pilot-hijacker on board flydubai FZ 1073 told PM Netanyahu that the stabbed captain managed to open the cockpit door before collapsing. This enabled the passengers to enter and seize the attacker, as he was attempting to destroy the aircraft systems and crash the plane.
Richard Hollis retweeted
The only Fighter Command pilot awarded the Victoria Cross during the entire Second World War told his pregnant wife: “Shot down. Very slightly hurt.” I am stunned by what James Nicolson hid inside those words.
On 16 August 1940, his Hurricane was hit by four cannon shells and caught fire over Southampton. Wounded and about to bail out, he saw a German fighter. He sat back down in the flames and attacked it. He did not jump until it was shot down.
His hands, face, neck and legs were badly burned. (The understatement almost hurts to read.)
I am in awe of that choice. He could have escaped seconds earlier.
Nicolson recovered and returned to war. Five years later, an RAF Liberator carrying him crashed into the Bay of Bengal. His body was never found.
His wife received the news on VE Day.
I am heartbroken by that ending. Britain was celebrating while Muriel learned the war had taken her husband.
This week marks 86 years since his act of courage. James Nicolson deserves to be remembered by name.
Richard Hollis retweeted
J.R.R. Tolkien to his German publisher in 1939: "but if I am to understand that you are inquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people....if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort become the rule...a German name will no longer be a source of pride."
Richard Hollis retweeted
The real victims of the Cambridge scandal are the students, who signed up to learn “inclusive pedagogy and decolonising the curriculum within the academy,” and instead learned totally made up nonsense.
Richard Hollis retweeted
Every morning I write about someone Iran just executed, within minutes, a message arrives a mother, a sister, a friend, begging me to write about their loved one who is on the death row. Before it's too late.
This is why I want to write before the execution of this young woman, not after. Arghavan Fallahi. 24 years old. Evin Prison. Sentenced to death.
Judge Salavati one of Iran's most notorious hanging judges, sentenced her under "Baghi," armed rebellion.
During months in solitary confinement, she was subjected to severe psychological torture and pressure to make forced confessions. But she refused. So they sentenced her to death anyway.
Fellow female prisoners who were with Arghavan inside Evin say her situation is urgent. The torture has left her with severe psychological trauma and physical illness. She is not just facing the death sentence, she is suffering right now, inside that cell. But is still alive and is still time to save her life.
Please join me and help us Iranians to say her name now and demand international community and the leader leaders of the world to put pressure on these that republic to stop them from executing her and other political prisoners.
#StopExecutionsInIran
Richard Hollis retweeted
Steel Beach Tomcat Flyby.
This is the iconic knife edge pass photo of an F-14 Tomcat, taken in 1988 aboard the USS America (CV-66) during a Dependents’ Day Cruise/family day event.
The pilot was CDR (later CAPT) Dale “Snort” Snodgrass, then Executive Officer of VF-33 “Starfighters,” one of the most experienced F-14 pilots ever (over 4,800 hours in the Tomcat, the highest-time pilot).
The photo was captured by Aviation Boatswain’s Mate Third Class (ABE3) Sean E. Dunn, a flight deck crew member handling launching and recovering equipment.
Snodgrass was performing the opening pass for a Tomcat tactical demonstration/air show routine at sea. He approached from the starboard rear quarter of the ship, at or slightly below flight deck level, wings swept forward, at around 250 knots. He lit the afterburners about half a mile out, accelerating to ~325 knots. As he neared the fantail (stern), he rolled into an ~85-degree bank and executed a hard 2-3G (or up to 5-6G in some accounts) turn, passing very close with the aircraft knife-edged (wings nearly vertical). He then rolled wings-level just above the deck, pulled vertical with a quarter-roll, and continued the demo with an Immelmann turn.
The vapor/smoke visible is likely from the afterburners and high-speed maneuver in humid air. The people on deck (including Admiral Jay Johnson, arms behind his back, who later became Chief of Naval Operations) provide dramatic scale. Many viewers initially assume it’s photoshopped, a near-crash, or extremely risky, but Snodgrass described it as a practiced, dramatic (but not overly hazardous) way to kick off the show — a maneuver originated by another pilot, Ed “Hunack” Andrews of VF-84.
Richard Hollis retweeted
A young SpaceX employee asked Elon what happens if they fail to reach Mars in his lifetime. The room was full of engineers and the question landed heavier than anyone expected.
It was a simple question but it cut to the core of everything SpaceX exists for. The entire company, every late night, every exploded prototype, every engineer who missed their kid's birthday for a launch window, it all points at Mars. What if it doesn't happen in time?
Elon paused.
He said that the goal was never for him personally to walk on Mars. The goal was to build the infrastructure that makes it inevitable. That even if he dies before the first crew lands, the system he built would carry the mission forward without him.
He said the rockets, the factories, the team, the culture, all of it is designed to outlast any single person. Including him. Especially him.
Then he said something that reportedly moved people in the room.
He said that if he thought success depended on him being alive, he would have already failed. The whole point is building something that doesn't need its founder to keep going.
He compared it to a cathedral. The architects of medieval cathedrals knew they would die before the building was finished. They designed it anyway. They poured their life into something they would never see completed because the completion wasn't the point. The commitment was.
SpaceX is his cathedral. He may never set foot on Mars. But the road between here and there will exist because he refused to accept that nobody was building it.
The most ambitious man alive has already made peace with the possibility that his greatest achievement might happen after he's gone. That's not failure. That's faith in something bigger than yourself.
Richard Hollis retweeted
To repeat. The UK is not ungovernable. It is badly governed. These are different things.
